Archive for April, 2014

“Man,” said Mordel, “possessed a basically incomprehensible nature. I can illustrate it, though: he did not know measurement.”

“Of course he knew measurement,” said Frost, “or he could never have built machines.”

“I did not say that he could not measure,” said Mordel, “but that he did not know measurement, which is a different thing altogether.”

“Clarify.”

Mordel drove a shaft of metal downward into the snow.

He retracted it, raised it, held up a piece of ice.

“Regard this piece of ice, mighty Frost. You can tell me its composition, dimensions, weight, temperature. A man could not look at it and do that. A man could make tools which would tell him these things, but he still would not know measurement as you know it. What he would know of it, though, is a thing that you cannot know.”

“What is that?”

“That it is cold,” said Mordel, and tossed it away.

—Roger Zelazny, “For A Breath I Tarry”

Last night there was to be a double execution—YEEHAW!—in Oklahoma.

A by-god two-fer!

Guaranteed to get them old shriveled wrinkled flaccid done-long-gone-retired white-boy little-itty-bitty rods, a-rectin’! Like they ain’t been since them good ol’ days when any old good ol’ boy could just go out and rope, castrate, and hang hisself a Negro.

Oklahoma is the fetid stinking infected butthole of the United States.

Wherever you are, in this country, if you are not in Oklahoma: you are better off.

Oklahoma is such an irredeemable Hellpit that once, there in the early 19th Century, the white people grasped firmly hold of the eastern sections of the country, they shipped the non-dead-from-smallpox-blankets Indians there, to Oklahoma, along the Trail Of Tears.

The place considered such a dead-end station, such a trash heap, that only the remnants of Indians, were fit to live there.

Later in the 19th Century, of course, the white people ran utterly wild, and commanded that their seed spread across all the lands of the North American continent—in places all and every.

And so the Indians were butt-kicked out of Oklahoma, so that paleface cornholing banjo-playing incest-ravenous droolers who had never touched the monolith could settle there in their stead.

I have been to Oklahoma. And there I learned, first-hand, that the state is most notable for two things. Sand. And fucking your sister. Or, failing that, your mother.

anyone who had a heartthey wouldn’t turn around and break itand anyone who’s ever played a partthey wouldn’t turn around and hate it

they say: ukrainesweet ukraineoh: ukrainesweet ukraine

We are all drowning in filth. When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has any axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgement have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone’s thought is forensic, everyone is simply putting a “case” with deliberate suppression of his opponent’s point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends. The Indian nationalist is sunken in self pity and hatred of Britain and utterly indifferent to the miseries of China, the English pacifist works himself up into frenzies about concentration camps in the Isle of Man and forgets about those in Germany etc. etc. One notices this in the case of people one disagrees with, such as Fascists or pacifists, but in fact everyone is the same, at least everyone who has definite opinions. Everyone is dishonest, and everyone is utterly heartless towards people who are outside the immediate range of his own interests and sympathies. What is most striking of all is the way sympathy can be turned on or off like a tap according to political expediency. All the pinks, or most of them, who flung themselves to and fro in their rage against Nazi atrocities before the war, forgot all about these atrocities and obviously lost their sympathy with the Jews etc as soon as the war began to bore them. Ditto with people who hated Russia like poison up to 22 June 1941 and then suddenly forgot about the purges, the GPU etc the moment Russia came into the war. I am not thinking of lying for political ends, but of actual changes in subjective feeling.

—George Orwell, April 27, 1942

i’ve been runnin’from side to sidenow i know for surethat both sides lie

they’re going wild
the call came inearly morning predawn, thenthe followers of chaos:out of control

they’re numbering the monkeysthe monkeys and the monkeysthe followers of chaos:out of control

the call came in to party centralmeeting of the green and simpletry to tell us something we don’t know

they’re meeting at the monumentthe call came in: the monumentto liberty and honor under the honor roll

disturbance at the heron housea stampede at the monumentto liberty and honor under the honor roll

a gathering of grunts and greenscogs and grunts and hirelingsa meeting of a mean idea to hold

feeding time has come and gonethey’ll lose their heart and head for hometry to tell us something we don’t know